Former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) superstar Ronda Rousey is officially back in the fight game.
Rousey will collide with women’s MMA pioneer Gina Carano on May 16 inside the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles, with the bout streaming on Netflix. It’s being labeled a long-overdue “dream fight,” even if it’s arriving about 12 years past its expiration date.
The matchup has sparked everything from nostalgia-fueled excitement to eye-roll fatigue across the MMA landscape. Either way, people are talking — and that includes one of Rousey’s most infamous rivals (and hater).
Enter Cris Cyborg.
Cyborg, who famously retired Carano back in 2009 under the Strikeforce banner, didn’t waste time taking a shot at Rousey after the announcement.
“All those years of ducking me at 145 when we were both in our prime?!” Cyborg wrote on Twitter. “I thought you had CTE or something?”
Yikes.
The Brazilian former champion was referencing Rousey’s past interviews in which she revealed suffering multiple concussions during her career — issues she said ultimately contributed to her retirement following back-to-back knockout losses to Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes.
Of course, the Rousey-Cyborg rivalry defined an era of women’s MMA trash talk. For years, Cyborg campaigned for a 145-pound superfight while Rousey dominated at 135 pounds. Rousey frequently dismissed the idea, often pointing to Cyborg’s past PED suspension as a reason to avoid the bout — despite publicly claiming she wanted to “kill her with her bare hands.”
And this isn’t new territory. As recently as 2024, Cyborg fired off another jab suggesting Rousey might have CTE after Rousey declared herself the greatest fighter of all time.
Now that Rousey is competing outside the UFC umbrella, the door — theoretically — could finally open for the fight that never was.
